The lives of more than a hundred young Muslim women are shattered every year in Bradford when their families attempt to force them into marriage against their will, the city's police race relations officer said yesterday.
Experts working with young women who are seeking to avoid or escape from an arranged marriage say that a widening generation gap is bringing, the issue to the fore. Many older people among Bradford's 75,000-strong Pakistani community exist in a self-contained world, they say. Their daughters, by contrast, have received a Western education, have friends who are not Muslim and are increasingly rebellious when ordered by their father to travel to Kashmir to marry a first or second cousin they have never met and with whom they feel they will have nothing in common.
Anne Cryer, MP for Dewsbury in the Bradford district has opposed forced marriages said yesterday that, 4he approached every year by about 30 young Pakistani women seeking her help to protect them from having to marry against their will. Al-though she emphasised that she did not disapprove of the concept of arranged marriages, there is a dear perception within Bradford's Pakistani community that the problem of forced marriages is being highlighted as part of a wider attempt to destroy the tradition of arranged marriage.
Mohammed Masood, a Bradford ta3d driver, said the "very few" cases of forced marriage were jumped on by the media and politicians to mask "the 98 per cent of arranged marriages which work out well for all concerned" , including his own.
Inspector Martin Baines, Bradford's
community race relations officer, said that forced marriage was "a very
serious' and growing problem in the city. He said: "More than 300 cases
involving young Asian women are referred to the police every year in Bradford,
one third of them directly connected to problems with arranged marriages
and others often indirectly, linked, including many incidents of serious
domestic violence."